This week, rumors are flying about Katy Perry’s canned opening performance at MTV’s Video Music Awards last night. Perry, however, will perform Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” instead of her Billboard-topping single, “I Kissed a Girl.” So why are we talking about Perry? I had my hesitations about being vocal when Perry initially released her first single, “Ur So Gay,” then she released her second, “I Kissed a Girl.” As I reached for the tuner each time Perry’s first few bars would blare from my speakers, I felt more than a little annoyed.
Time and time again we stress the importance of positive LGBT visibility in the community. Corporations and communities have worked diligently to build a more accepting and engaging environment with positive messages of the LGBT community. However, it disheartens me to know that such anti-gay messages, such as those conveyed through Perry’s songs, could spread 20 times a day in all top 150 markets.
My friend Ben Finzel once wrote that “If our lives are not acknowledged, it’s that much harder to demonstrate that we exist and that we contribute to the social fabric of the global community.” Yes, and if our lives are acknowledge to be perceived as “wrong” or “an experimental game,” then it is even more difficult for us to demonstrate the basic fact that we are people.
Perry’s music embodies a derogatory, blatant disdain for the LGBT community. There is power in words. In “Ur So Gay,” Perry portrays an obliviousness to the negative and offensive connotation of being “gay,” and in “I Kissed a Girl”, she shows a misperception that lesbianism is a mere excuse to get attention from the opposite sex. For years media has stress the intolerance of anti-gay discriminatory messages, but when anti-gay statements came from the mouth of a brunette in a cute bow dress, some of us, media included, forgot what words could do. I didn’t.
Image courtesy of http://www.katyperry.com/.
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